Technical Field
This disclosure relates to electronic design automation (EDA). More specifically, this disclosure relates to look-ahead timing prediction for multi-instance module (MIM) engineering change order (ECO).
Related Art
Advances in process technology and a practically unlimited appetite for consumer electronics have fueled a rapid increase in the size and complexity of integrated circuit (IC) designs. The term “module” can generally refer to an arbitrary portion of a circuit design. Today's complex circuit designs can include multiple instances of the same module, and such a module is called a multi-instance module or MIM for short (the term “multi-instance block,” or MIB for short, can also be used to refer to an MIM). For example, an example of an MIM is a processor core; an IC may have multiple instances of the processor core MIM.
A set of design requirements can be defined to ensure that a manufactured chip will perform as desired. Typically, a circuit design is not manufactured until it satisfies the design requirements which can include, but are not limited to, timing requirements, noise requirements, power requirements, etc.
Before a circuit design is signed-off, a compliance checking tool is typically used to identify any leftover design requirement violations in a circuit design. Incremental adjustments—also known as ECOs—are then made to the circuit design to fix the design requirement violations. Once the circuit design is violation free, the circuit design can be readied for manufacturing.
Determining a good set of ECOs to fix the design requirement violations can be difficult because applying an ECO to a circuit design may create new design requirement violations and/or may introduce undesirable inconsistencies in the circuit design.